All posts tagged Cable

The U.S. cable-TV business, much like telephone and radio, has been consolidating from dozens of regional players to a handful of giants. proposed acquisition of would unite the nation’s two biggest cable operators, giving Comcast roughly a third of the nation’s cable-TV subscribers. Below is a chart of major acquisitions (both partial and whole) by Comcast, [...] Read More »

As cable prices rise, some consumers are finding their own solution: canceling their subscriptions. To see if cutting the cord is the right option for you, answer a few questions in a MarketWatch interactive about your TV-watching habits. Read More »

After two weeks as a cord-cutter, the novelty is wearing off. It didn’t help that I broke out in hives on Sunday while watching Amazon.com Inc’s streaming video service, the latest stage of my experiment in living without cable TV.

Not that I blame Amazon, mind you. My money is on the dust stirred up when I yielded to peer pressure and dumped our older high definition TV set on the curb outside our house. The 150 pound monster – it took four of us to carry it out of the house – had a decent picture but it wasn’t as good as our newer plasma set in a different room.

Leaving that aside, I’m beginning to understand why some in television see the threat of cord-cutting more in young people who never had cable to begin with than in older folks.

Life as a cord-cutter, without a pay television subscription, isn’t as much of a fringe activity as it might seem. Lots of TV shows are available for purchase on iTunes, often right after they first air on TV, and services like Netflix and Amazon.com offer cheap flat-rate options for catching up with others.

The one outlet whose content has typically been kept inside the walled garden of pay TV has been HBO. While someone willing to wait a few months could rent a DVD or buy an episode on iTunes, diehard fans who want to catch the latest episode of “Boardwalk Empire” or “Game of Thrones” as soon as it is available have had little choice but to subscribe to pay TV. (Well, they could engage in piracy, but that’s another story).

Lots of people are hoping that Time Warner Inc. will one day offer HBO on broadband without requiring a pay TV subscription. So far there’s little sign that’s going to happen anytime soon. HBO is nervous about alienating satellite and cable operators that now market its service and which wouldn’t be thrilled if HBO was available outside pay TV, given the incentive that could give some people to cut the cord.

I finally did it – cut the cord. After years of my wheedling, my wife finally agreed to our disconnecting the landline phone and cable TV to become an Internet-only household. Helping make my case was that one of the cordless phones we used had been chewed up by the dog. And the only people who called the landline number, aside from my mother in law, were telemarketers.

Meanwhile, with one daughter in college and one son held captive by Grand Theft Auto whatever-the-number, the TVs sit unused many nights of the week. We long ago got out of the habit of watching broadcast television, gravitating more to dramas on premium channels like HBO, Showtime or AMC, like “Boardwalk Empire” or “Mad Men.” But even some of these feel like they’ve lost steam. Read More »

Tom Rutledge, president and chief executive officer of Charter Communications

Charter Communications Inc. Chief Executive Tom Rutledge is a key player in the unfolding drama over the potential for consolidation in the U.S. cable industry. As noted in a Wall Street Journal profile of him Friday, the cable veteran gets high marks from his peers for his sharp intellect and decades of experiences running complex cable systems.

In an interview, Mr. Rutledge said cable industry mergers could produce two major players, discussed why he left Cablevision Systems Corp. and recalled an important phone call he got in the Caribbean.

Find some excerpts from the exclusive WSJ interview with Mr. Rutledge after the jump. Read More »

Cablevision subscribers now have the option to view programming on their iPhone or iTouch.

The upgrade to its Optimum App allows device owners to consume both live TV and video on demand programming as well as manage their DVR system. Previously, the app was only available for the iPad.

The move comes as Cablevision and rival Time Warner, which offers a similar iPad app for its subscribers, continue to face hostility from some networks who say that current contracts do not provide cable companies with the right to stream content to another device. Among their concerns: device streaming hinders ad revenues which are dependent on TV ratings as measured by Nielsen. Read More »

Comcast Corp.’s rivals have long warned that cable bills will go up if America’s biggest cable operator is allowed to buy NBC Universal. On Monday they put a figure on that increase: $2.4 billion over nine years.

Associated Press

The American Cable Association, which represents small and medium cable operators, on Monday released a study on the effects of the proposed deal, saying it would hand the Comcast “unrestrained pricing power.”

“It is clear that the Comcast-NBCU deal will send monthly cable bills higher by billions of dollars over the next decade, underscoring ACA’s view that regulators must protect consumers and competition from a transaction whose benefits are vastly outweighed by its harms,” ACA President and CEO Matthew M. Polka said in a statement.

The shift from cable subscriptions to Internet TV could hit New York City’s bottom line in a big way, writes Digits colleague Aaron Rutkoff at Metropolis.

Associated Press

Time Warner Cable and Cablevision pay the city 5% of revenue from all cable subscriptions sold to residents in exchange for the right to run their wires along city streets — about $110 million for the city each year, according to Bruce Regal, a senior lawyer at the city Law Department and one of the negotiators who worked on the city’s new contract with cable providers.

And a potential cable exodus may be on the horizon, according to industry analysts. A report last month by the research firm SNL Kagan found that a record high 700,000 U.S. households dropped their cable-TV subscriptions in the second quarter.

“We already have consumers moving to online video on a very regular basis,” explained James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Even if they don’t cut the cable altogether, they are going to be moving to lower tiers” of cable service.

McQuivey points to the popularity of Netflix’s streaming-video service, which now allows consumers to watch a wide selection of movies and TV shows via the Internet. “In some cities, Netflix accounts for as much as 10% of all broadband traffic during prime-time viewing hours,” he says. “Ten percent is huge.”

Dow Jones Newswires’ Brendan Conway tells the Digits show why he thinks the recent spate of M&A activity in the tech sector hasn’t been enough to ignite technology stocks. People are too worried about the macroeconomic environment to be buoyed by news of technology deals, he says.

Plus, the subscription television industry suffered a drop in total subscribers in the second quarter. It’s a concern for the TV industry and possibly a bad sign for the economy, says Nat Worden. Meanwhile, more online TV viewing options abound.